


Room to Grow

by secretsoup



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Crushes, F/F, First Kiss, Pining, Rated T for Teenagers being Teenagers, Second Person Perspective, m+f friendship, supplimental characters as set dressing, the OC is not actually relevent, they're all teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 04:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15833631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsoup/pseuds/secretsoup
Summary: Webbigail Vanderquack has her first date the autumn after she turns 15.You swallow a mouthful of pork fried rice that feels and tastes like gravel and say, “Congrats, Webs, who’s the lucky….whoever?”“Piper, from the taco stand on the pier,” she says, and the boys start up a chorus of ooooh, Piper, you know, from the pier, like any of you know who the hell Piper from the pier is. Maybe they do and you're the only one who hasn't been paying attention, because if a person isn’t a member of the Extended McDuck Enterprises Family of Weirdos and Maniacs, they might as well be dust to you. These people are your whole world, they gave you life when you were nothing but half a shadow and an idea in the heart of a little girl three years ago, and it's never occured to you to waste your time with anyone else.Maybe that was naive of you.





	Room to Grow

**Author's Note:**

> HDL: 14, Webby: 15, Lena: 16
> 
> Born of a post on tumblr in which a kind anon asked if I had any headcanons and I said "No" and then promptly went off for 750 words so....here's 5,000 more.

Webbigail Vanderquack has her first date the autumn after she turns 15.

She announces it to the four of you, passing cartons of Chinese takeout around the kitchen island and fighting over shrimp like the teenage animals you are. When she says it, giddy and proud, “Guess who has a date to the fair Saturday night?” all four of you stop chewing and fighting and reaching with greedy chopsticks to stare at her, aghast. There’s a moment of genuine confusion as logically the answer is “Webby does!” but that  _ can't _ be right, because... well. It just can’t be.

Huey gives you a quick side eye before recovering, and Dewey, who is not as tactful or subtle, turns his head from you, to Webby, and back again.

Louie, who is leaning on the opposite end of the island from you, past Webby, opens a can of soda with a deafening  _ fsshhtCRACK!  _ and maintains very deliberate eye contact with you while draining half of it in one go.

You swallow a mouthful of pork fried rice that feels and tastes like gravel and say, “Congrats, Webs, who’s the lucky….whoever?”

“Piper, from the taco stand on the pier,” she says, and the boys start up a chorus of  _ ooooh, Piper, you know, from the pier _ , like any of you know who the hell Piper from the pier is. Maybe  _ they _ do and you're the only one who hasn't been paying attention, because if a person isn’t a member of the Extended McDuck Enterprises Family of Weirdos and Maniacs, they might as well be dust to you. These people are your whole world, they gave you life when you were nothing but half a shadow and an idea in the heart of a little girl three years ago, and it's never occurred to you to waste your time with anyone else.

Maybe that was naive of you.

“Piper gives me extra guac,” Dewey says approvingly, confirming it’s probably just you who’s an oblivious idiot.

“Yeah, she’s a good egg.” Louie says dismissively, still looking directly at you while addressing Webby. “Hey, I didn't know you had a thing for her.”

“Oh,” Webby blushes a little and toys with her hair. She’s grown it out, and it hits her shoulders in soft waves. You become very interested in your fried rice, because there’s no one judging you or being painfully beautiful in it. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it, but she asked, so why not, right? She’s nice.”

“Wow, who knew it was that easy,” Huey says with a sideways look. He’s never had much patience for your bullshit, or you his, and you return him a Look that roughly translates to  _ watch your back, nerd. _ You try and continue eating like the ground isn't crumbling out from under you, but that gravel texture hasn't gone away, so you set the carton in front of Dewey. He’s more than happy to kill it for you.

You were made from darkness and suffering, it's in what passes for your bones and your blood and you've never forgotten it, not for a single day, so when you open your big stupid mouth and hear yourself say, “You should let me help you get ready, you can borrow some of my clothes,” you think,  _ that sounds about right.  _ No one can self-sabotage like Lena le Strange.

Webby lights up like a Christmas tree, and your stomach collapses into itself like a rotting pumpkin. 

  
  
  
  


“Oh my god,” you wheeze, as soon as she cleans up her leftovers and leaves to go tell her grandma the news️. “Oh my god.”

“Rough luck, Lena,” Louie says.

“Don't you  _ dare _ pity her,” Huey cuts in, “She had three years.  _ Three years _ .”

“To be fair,” Dewey says around a spring roll, “she was a ghost for like, half of that.”

“It was eight months,” Huey corrects.

“But it felt like forever,” you complain, because it was terrible and it did.

“It was  _ eight months _ and it still counts because Webby wouldn't have cared. I've  _ seen _ her list of supernatural creatures she’s willing to kiss, and it's very long.”

So have you, and it is.

“Honestly, Lena, did you think you could just string her along forever?”

Huey is  _ actually mad,  _ you realize, not just giving you a hard time for being a moron. He was always the daddest of the five of you, but it's really showing right now in the way he’s not putting up with your melodramatic BS.

“ _ Excuse me _ , I would never,” you start to say, but Dewey and Louie both make distinct and separate sounds of  _ well _ , and  _ actually,  _ the little traitors _. Et tu, Louie,  _ your best non-Webby friend _. _

“She’s been insufferable over you for  _ three years _ , you don't get to be hurt that she gave up on you when you never made a move.”

“Wha-  _ Insufferable,  _ what does that even mean?”

“Oh my god, she’s disgusting.” It must be true if Dewey says so, because Dewey doesn't notice most things unless it directly affects him. “I mean, you knew, right? Everybody knows. _ I _ know.”

“He didn't know,” Louie corrects. “We had to tell him. But Webby’s not exactly subtle, I knew before  _ she _ did.” He turns to his brothers. “Do you remember the beanstalk expedition? She wouldn't shut up the  _ whole time _ about Lena spending the night for the first time.”

“It was exhausting. She almost got us killed.”

“Yeah, see?” Louie shrugs. “I love ya like a sister, Lena, but, like. A  _ sister-in-law _ , y'know? She’s been messed up over you for a long time, it's not  _ her _ fault you're too cool to care or whatever.”

_ That _ stings

“Alright, I get it.” Their loyalty is to Webby first and foremost, and that's fair. It hurts, but it's fair. You're the black sheep, the odd one out, the rehabilitated monster. If Webby’s family, you're family by proxy. 

And it's not like you didn't know, because you did, kind of. Mostly. It's just. You didn't think there was a rush. You didn't count on outside forces. You've been through literal hell together, you rode on the soles of her feet tied to her heartstrings for  _ eight months _ , what reason did you think the girl from the taco stand with her extra quac would come between  _ that _ and growing into eccentric little old hens together? 

You liked it the way it was, your extra special friendship without labels, affection without expectations, intimacy without the fear of rejection.

You swallow hard. They're right. 

You blew it.

  
  
  


You’re smoothing the creases out of a cute pink and white gingham blouse you’ve never once seen Webby wear. “Does this fit?”

“I think so.” You toss it to her and she holds it up to her shoulders in front of the mirror. She starts undoing the buttons and you wade back into your shared closet, looking for buried treasure. You've been back in the real world for a little over two years, and you have absolutely made up for all the time you lost to being a magic ghost-shadow thing or a homeless slave-shadow thing by filling your life with material goods. The duality of your shared wardrobe is like a bad joke, Webby’s half in pink and purple and ribbons, yours in black and gray and silver studs. You choose half a dozen things from your side even though you’re vastly different sizes now; you’re on the fast track to taking after your creator (may she rot in hell, wherever she is) tall and willowy, and while Webby is growing, albeit slowly, she’s staying generally small and compact. She’s short and cute, but you know from experience you couldn't push her over with two hands and a running start.

“What do you think?” 

You pop your head back out to look and she looks so sweet and wholesome in this stupid little blouse, like something out of a catalogue from 60 years ago. The picture-perfect girl-next-door, but with a scarred, featherless stripe over one eye where she took a cursed knife to the face on her 14th birthday in Sierra de la Plata.

“So cute I'm gonna puke,” you tell her, and immediately drop all the things you've chosen from your half of the closet and try again. It feels wrong to give her something that's so obviously yours and not hers, dark and moody, like you’re laying a claim on her, letting Piper-from-the-pier know you’ve got dibs. That’s…gross, and you don't. So instead you grab a denim jacket you’ve never worn because it's more her shade than yours and tell her to try it on. It's a little big, but that's a cute look on someone Webby’s size. You cuff the sleeves to the middle of her forearm and tell her to pick whatever she wants from the drawer in your vanity where you keep the pins and buttons and bits of garbage jewelry you've “collected” over the last two years. A few pastel-goth enamel pins and plastic pink bangles later, she holds her arms out and spins for your approval.

She’s beautiful. 

You sweep her bangs back and pin them aside with a little star-shaped barrette, and Webby falters.

“Should I,” she starts, lifting her fingers to the scar, and she’s never been self conscious of it before, so it never occurred to you she might want to hide it.

“Absolutely not. Girls love a cool scar story.”

“Oh yeah?” she smiles at you, and it adds five years to your borrowed life.

“Yup, and I would know, I'm usually the one passing out the scars.”

“It’s true, you're the  _ best _ at stabbing. That’s why you’re my favorite.”

Oh for crying out loud.

You can't help it, you pull her in for a slightly awkward hug. You were always taller than her, but now she fits so easily and completely under your bill you can't help but think that space was carved out just for her. “I'm happy for you, Webby.”  _ I am. I really am. I'm dying, but I'm so glad someone had the courage to let you know how special you are. It could have been me, but it wasn't, and now I have to deal with that on my own. _

“Thanks for your help, Lena,” she says, breaking the hug. She checks herself over in the mirror one last time, and shoulders a little pink purse. “I'm a little nervous.”

“Don't be. She either adores you or she’s wrong and I beat her up.” You drop your voice and say, threateningly, “I’m the best at stabbing.”

She appreciates your “joke.” It's a “joke” because if Piper-from-the-pier makes Webby sad, you know you will definitely end up paying her a visit, but you  _ probably _ won't actually hurt her.

You’d better not be making any promises you can't keep, though.

“Do you think,” she says, with a small amount of hesitation, “We’ll see you there?”

“Yeah, probably not. I think the boys are going though.” You know for a fact Huey has a nerd robotics thing at the fairgrounds, and Launchpad and Dewey are planning to get utterly turnt on triple-fried fair food and high-velocity, poorly maintained carnival rides. “Don't worry, I’ll stay out of your hair.”

“Oh. Okay. Wish me luck?”

“Knock em dead, Webby.”

  
  
  


You also know for a fact that Louie is staying home tonight. Carnivals are overpriced, the prizes are cheap trash and not worth the trouble of counter-scamming for them, and he’s not a fan of thrill rides. You know he’s gonna park his butt on the couch to marathon some garbage-tier television for six hours and budge for nothing, and you know what the admission price to get in on that action is.

“2 bags ketchup flavored potato chips, a box of chocolate peanut butter pop tarts, and six authentic imported Kinder eggs,” you itemize, dumping it unceremoniously into his lap.️

“Ill-gotten goods,” he says of the Kinder eggs, proudly. “I also would have accepted cash.” He clears a spot on the couch for you. “But I want to be clear: this is not a pity party.”

“I'm a good friend, I helped her get ready for her date, I was supportive. I am not being weird or possessive.”

“What, you want a medal?”

“I want some pizza.”

“That, I have.”

You’re each three slices of pizza and two episodes of some senselessly bizarre cooking competition️ in when your phones ping simultaneously with a selfie from Dewey with Launchpad with his head in a trashcan in the background. “Gross,” you agree aloud to each other, and Huey and Webby chime in similar sentiments in the group chat. “F” types Louie. “RIP” you agree.️

“You think Huey’s still mad at me?” You wonder out loud after a moment, watching the group text.

“He’s not mad, he’s just  _ disappointed _ ,” Louie says with the exact tone of someone who thinks Huey’s attempt to be the dad brother-friend is completely exhausting. “I’d take it and run,  _ you’ve _ seen him mad. If he’s mad, you’ll know it.”

“That’s true.”

He side-eyes you.

“He’s also right, you know.”

You stew on this for a minute, and decide  _ you _ can be mad too.

“Okay,  _ look _ .”

“Yup, here we go.” He mutes the TV and cracks open a fresh soda.

“Nobody’s more Team Webby than me.  _ Nobody _ . I don’t care how protective any of you are of her, none of you lived in her shadow for  _ eight months _ . None of you  _ exist _ because she believed in you  _ so hard  _ she dragged you out of hell to be real again.” You get up and start pacing angrily. “I'm only  _ here _ because of Webby, I owe her my  _ life _ , as worthless as it is without her. So you all can give me a hard time for stringing her along all this time, which I am  _ not doing _ , but what happens if I ask her out and she says no? What if she says yes, and changes her mind, or it doesn't work out, or we start fighting all the time? What if the magic  _ stops working _ , or worse, what if it  _ doesn't _ and I can’t live here anymore because she hates me so I'm just, like, freaking  _ stuck here, _ alone in the world, with nobody? Why’s this on me? Why didn't  _ she _ ask  _ me _ out if she’s so useless over me?”

You’re panting a little.

“Uhhhh, because you owe her your life?” Louie says like it's obvious.

“What,” you say, snappish and not at all a question.

“Well duh, Lena, she doesn’t want a  _ pet _ , she wants a  _ friend _ . So, what, she brings you back to life, you feel like you owe her, and she’s supposed to _ask you out_? You were made to serve, you think Webby hasn't been hyper aware of that since day one? That you might feel obligated to do whatever she wants? I mean, I don't know, maybe you're into that kind of thing, I'm not here to yuck anybody’s yum-”

“What, no,  _ gross _ -”

“-but you still sleep in her room like an animal, Lena, you’re  _ sixteen _ .  _ We _ split the day we turned thirteen, and we've been together  _ for-literally-ever _ .”

“She’s, she’s,” Your brain and mouth fail to connect to create anything meaningful. It never occurred to you to move out of her room, you're happy there with her. She likes having you close by, and you her. You don't get nightmares anymore so it's not like you  _ need _ the company, and as you've gotten older, it's gotten more cramped,  _ sure _ , but if it had seemed at all like she needed the space… Ah. Hmm. That's the problem, isn't it? If she had asked you to leave, you would. If she wanted you to stay, you would.

If she told you to bring her the moon, you'd find a way to do it.

“I’d understand if I thought you two were getting up to someth-”

“Okay, SHUT UP  _ I GET IT _ .” You grab a pillow off the sofa and pop him with it.

“You used to be pushier. You used to be  _ hard. _ ” He launches the pillow back at you. “Maybe she just wants you to show some agency.”

You collapse back on the sofa, hugging the pillow. You  _ did _ used to be hard. But that was when you didn't have a choice. Webby taught you that it's okay to be soft, sometimes. Webby’s taught you a lot of things. “I just...like seeing her happy. Or, whatever.”

“I've heard love does that to a person. Sounds gross.”

You sigh and deflate with an irritated groan. It  _ is _ pretty gross. It's disgusting.

Then,

“How much do you love  _ me _ ? Enough to help me do some heavy lifting?”

“Not even close,” he says. “But I can come watch.”

“That’s the sister-in-law rate, huh?”

“Don't be too hard on yourself, my own flesh-and-blood wouldn't get more.” He fishes a lukewarm slice of pizza out of the nearly empty box. “Sorry about that, by the way. I didn't mean it as a dig, we all honestly thought you'd be planning your wedding by now.”

“That's fair.” 

So did you, when you were younger.

  
  
  
  


It takes two minutes and two meaningful and pitiable looks from both Scrooge and Beakley for permission to pick a new bedroom. They give you a number of options, and you chose one in the same wing as Webby’s library-loft, but not too close by. You want to give her some space, and you want some of your own, but she's still your best friend in the whole world. Also, if she’s going to be bringing girls around now, maybe you don't want to share a wall with her. True to his word, Louie doesn't actually help, but he does keep you company and christen your new bed with ketchup flavored potato chip crumbs while he looks up the bands on your posters on his laptop to criticize your taste in music.

Surprisingly, you don't have that much stuff to move. Maybe it just felt like you did because so much of it was crammed into Webby’s space alongside her lifetime of collected things, but spread out in your own room, it's depressingly empty. Your closet is no longer a cliche cartoon joke, it's just one girl’s limited wardrobe. Your posters don't fill nearly enough wall space, and aside from the busted guitar you salvaged from the dump that you never got around to learning how to fix and a small collection of scratched LPs and a cheap turntable to play them on, you don't have nearly as many  _ things _ as you thought you did.

Louie seems to be thinking the same thing. “Yikes. Maybe you’ll grow into it?”

And you get the image of a houseplant kept in a pot too small, weak and yellow, roots cramped and growing back in on themselves. Maybe that's what you've been doing to yourself? Maybe now you'll have room to grow, to spread and flourish and be your own person, not a slave to Magica or indebted to Webby, but just you, for the first time, ever.

“Maybe,” you agree, and shove him to the side and join him on the bed to lose another hour and a half of your life to stupid internet videos.

  
  
  


You hear the others start to trickle in: Huey first, having won his nerd contest, Dewey and Launchpad loud and rambunctious after darkness falls. You turn up the volume on the low-budget horror B-movie you're sharing with Louie and pop open the second bag of ketchup chips because you don't want to know when Webby comes home. It's none of your business, and you're not going to be weird about it.

_ Weird _ would be doing something like moving out of the bedroom you've shared with your best friend of three years the minute she turns her back without giving her so much as a head’s up.

“Lena?” 

The door eases open and Webby pokes her head inside, tracking the room in confusion. “What are you-? I’ve been looking for you…” She looks distressed, and her voice sounds watery, like it does when she’s trying to not be upset. Your fight-or-flight response is triggered, and you come out of the gate swinging. 

“What happened,” you say, scrambling off the bed, showering crumbs onto the carpet. “What’d she do, Webby-”

“What? No, it was fine, Lena-”

“-I’ll fight her, I'll do it, tell me what she-”

“Lena, stop- _Lena_." After a beat: "You _  left?” _

You freeze, cold all over. Louie takes this opportunity to mutter, “Oh look at the time,” close his laptop, and slither past the both of you and out into the hallway.

“Uhhh.”

“I came home and I couldn't find you, and all your stuff was gone! I was  _ worried _ .”

“Sorry, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I didn’t-”

“You could have told me?”

“Okay, well, no, I  _ couldn’t _ , because I decided to do it like three hours ago, and what am I going to do, text you on your date? ‘I'm moving out, surprise!’ It's really not a big deal.”

“But, I could have helped? We could have done it together.”

“Louie helped,” which is not actually a lie, because he offered moral support.

She won't look at you, which is probably for the best because you don't really want to look at her either. Eventually, at a loss, she shrugs out of the jacket and tries to return it to you. 

“Nah, keep it. It looked better on you anyway.”

Webby stands there in the doorway of your new bedroom holding the jacket in midair between the two of you, and when you hazard a look at her face you can see how hard she’s thinking, like she keeps waiting for the moment to make sense in a way she can work with. Webby is so smart and so strong, but she struggles with social stuff more than anything, and you feel like a monster for being so vague and expecting her to understand why. 

Finally, she gives up.

“Lena, what is this? What’s  _ happening _ ? You know I'm not very good at this stuff, I don't know what you're thinking unless you say it, I feel like I did something wrong? Did I do something wrong, because if I did, I can try and-”

“Hey, hey, no, it’s nothing you did. Calm down, Webs.” You take the jacket from her because it feels important to her that you do so for some reason, and you're so damn  _ soft _ now. “I just. I dunno, thought it was time? We’re not kids anymore.” 

She shakes her head, frowning. “But it was fine this morning? I don't understand.”

Kindly, and patiently, because she  _ does  _ have trouble reading between the lines a lot of the time: “I’m not going to stay in your room if you have a girlfriend, Webby, that’s-”  _ torture  _ “-weird.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh.” That doesn't feel as good as it seems like it should. “Oh, do you….wanna come in and talk about it?”

She comes in and climbs into your bed among the chip bags and candy wrappers without waiting to be invited. You offer her a cold pop tart and she nibbles at it while you make a half-hearted attempt at tidying up.

“You said it was fine, was it not fine? I’m still down to fight her if you want me to.”

“No, it was fine. Just fine. She’s nice.” Webby gets bored of her pop tart pretty quickly and you tuck it into the empty chip bag you’re using to collect trash in. “She got a B on her civics test. A girl at school gave her a hard time for wearing the wrong color shirt?” She looks at you like maybe you can decipher these mysteries for her, but these things mean about as much to you as they do to Webby, which is very, very little. Webby could probably pass a civics test because she knows a crazy amount about everything, but you don’t even know what civics  _ is _ . Webby’s not going to say  _ she’s boring _ because Webby is a better person than you are and can find the silver lining in anyone or anything, she knows Piper-from-the-pier has value as a person and has plenty to offer a potential partner, but…. 

“You don't have anything in common,” you supply helpfully.

“She’s nice! She asked about the scar.” 

“Yeah? Does she think it’s hot?”

“She didn't believe me. She said Sierra de la Plata isn't real.”

“I’ll go fight her right now-”

“No.” She takes your pillow and hugs it. “It’s not her fault. We just didn't click. It would have been nice, though." She tucks her bill into the pillow. "Sometimes…”  

She trails off and you wait to see if she finishes the thought on her own, but she doesn’t. You sit on the edge of the bed next to her, and almost instantly she leans into you.

“Sometimes what?” Your throat is thick and it probably shows in your voice.

“Ah...I don't know. It's silly.”

“You can tell me.”

She sighs. “You ever notice how no one around here has anyone special? Everyone’s single, and widowed, or. Not  _ alone _ , none of us are alone, but. No one has a partner.”

“Oh I dunno. Scrooge has his smokin’ hot grandma friend.”

“Isn't she  _ gorgeous _ ?” Webby sighs. “I’d always hoped they’d get married, but…. That's what I mean. If  _ they _ can't make it work, then what's that mean for the rest of us? I don't want to be alone. Is that greedy? I used to have so little, and now I have a big family that cares about me. Is it selfish to want more?”

Your heart palpitates at the very  _ idea _ that Webby feels so close to giving up already. You pull yourself on the bed in full and tuck her neatly into your armpit. It puts the top of her head right under your bill, in that space made just for her. “No, it's not. But there’s no hurry, Webs, it's not a race.”

“I know,” she sighs. She adjusts and wraps her arms around your middle, pillows her head on your breast, and you're right back to where you started. Your extra special friendship without labels, affection without expectations, intimacy without the fear of rejection. But now you know she's not satisfied with this. It’s not enough. She’ll keep looking for love elsewhere, and she’ll keep coming to you like this whenever she gets her heart broken, and you’ll keep petting her hair and telling her it’ll be okay.

You don't think you're hard enough to do this forever.

_ Show some agency _ .

“Webby?”

“Hmm?”

“Is it too late?”

“For what?”

“For me.”

She sits up and looks at you. Her breath quickens; some of the hair pinned into the little star barrette has shaken free and falls into her eyes. She's beautiful, and it makes you stronger and weaker at the same time. 

“Lena?”

“Did I miss my chance?”

Her hands tighten in your sweater.

“No,” she gasps, voice pitching slightly Webby-manic in just one word. “Never.”

You don't have a plan. You don't have a speech.  You burned all your your emotional energy on your rant to Louie and all your regular energy on the impromptu move down the hall. So you just

...do it.

You kiss her. 

It's...nice.

It only lasts a few seconds, but it fills you with enough magic to tether you to the real world for another 50 years. It's tentative, and careful, and brief, but it's your first, and hers too, and ideally the first of many, many more, so it's safe to keep it safe.

You open your eyes and she's  _ vibrating _ , practically, looking at you the way she looks at possibility and opportunity; she’s hungry,  _ starving _  for knowledge and adventure and love, and you know in the half a moment before she lunges at you again that this is why none of these people can settle down, why they don't partner off, because they're all  _batshit fucking_   _ crazy _ and normal people just don't have a chance in hell of withstanding it, not the force of their personalities or the intensity of the lives they lead and least of all the fierceness of their love.

But you’re not normal, and you were reborn of darkness and the fierceness of that same love, it's in what passes for your bones and your blood, and you’ll never forget it, not for a single day. You  _ like _ that scar over her eye, and you know exactly how she got it because you were  _ there,  _ and with any luck you’ll be there for the next one, and she’ll be there for all of yours-

She crashes into you with such force the back of your head connects with the top edge headboard in the most unfortunate way possible. You feel pain and see stars and kind of slide off sideways mentally for a moment and when you come back Webby’s got her whole body wrapped around your head, practically, covering your hair and face and every angle of your bill in apologetic kisses. You're fine, you’ll be fine, it's stupid and funny and you’ll laugh about it for years to come, even when you’re eccentric little old hens and you’re sharing a bedroom again, she’ll move to kiss you and you’ll say  _ careful _ in that lazy smart-ass way you’re certain you’ll never grow out of, and she’ll laugh and she  _ will _ be until you can't  _ stand _ it anymore and  _ oh _ , no, dizzy, bad, maybe you’re not okay after all.

She fusses over you, props you up with pillows and kisses your forehead before rushing off to find an adult and something blooms impossibly big and full in your chest, a whole goddamn garden of it.

  
  
  
  


You're sitting on the kitchen island the next morning, concussion free, working on one of the left-over pop tarts when Louie shuffles in, half asleep, looking for food. He takes one bleary look at you at says, “Oh, thank god.”

“What?” You know exactly what but you say it anyway because you don't know how he knows and you never will, he's one of them too, after all. The Extended McDuck Enterprises Family of Weirdos and Maniacs.

“You’re the only one hard enough to handle her, le Strange. That girl from the taco stand never would have stood a chance.”

“You said-”

“What needed to be said.” He salutes you with a banana, a canned coffee, and a smug know-it-all smile. “Welcome to the family. Again.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> It was extremely hard for me to stop Lena from referring to Goldie as a "GILF" and to stop Webby from disclosing that being tied up and locked in a closet by Goldie was her lesbian awakening and frankly I think I deserve a reward for my Herculean restraint.


End file.
